


The Center Must Hold

by bricoleur10



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Hardison and Parker Live so I Guess There's That, So much angst, Vague Spoilers Up Through Season 4, Very Brief Mention of Suicidal Ideation, spans several years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricoleur10/pseuds/bricoleur10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot leaves. One by one the others follow. </p>
<p>Heed the warnings, I beg of you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Center Must Hold

**The Center Must Hold**

\--  
 _“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”  
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly_  
\--

\--

The moment he decides to leave is a calm one. 

They’re at the bar after a job, just like always. Nate and Sophie are at a table, Hardison and Parker are at a separate one. 

They’re safe, they’re happy, and they’re together. 

They don’t need him anymore. 

\--

David had been the first friend he’d made in the army. The first friend he’d made at all since he’d left Oklahoma. He’d joined up the year Eliot had decided to leave. They’d worked together for seven months. A lifetime and a half in military time. 

Then, years later, Eliot had been sent on a job. David had been his target. 

Eliot hadn’t gone through with it, Moreau had been pissed, and then, just like that, everything had changed. 

He’d told Moreau he was leaving in a soft, near gentle, voice; Moreau had let him. 

He’d made history that day. 

\--

He calls David that night, that calm night when everything changes again. 

He doesn’t say much. _Job, money, family, heart, redemption._

David says less. _Yes_. 

\--

He doesn’t know how to tell the others. 

They’re all words and screaming and emotion and need. They don’t get him. They don’t understand this. No one who hasn’t done what he’s done could ever fully understand him. 

And he’ll die before he gives that to them.

\--

There’s a group of men just like him – hitters, killers, specialists – headed tomorrow to Syria. 

_Overthrow_ used to be a word with a literal definition. 

Now a days it’s a code. 

_Overthrow_ means kill. 

_Liberate_ means steal. 

_At all costs_ means betray. 

This is the world Eliot belongs to, and he’ll stay there until the end. 

For them. 

\--

He’ll miss them. He’s human enough to accept that. To _feel_ that. 

He’ll miss them like breathing. Like family. 

But he needs to go. He needs to go _now_. 

Before they have a chance to miss him. 

\--

“The cons are getting simpler.” He tells Nate the next morning. There’s a duffle bag in his truck, his apartment’s wiped clean, the others aren’t here. 

“Eliot?” Nate’s still rumpled from sleep, looking around like he’s trying to find coffee or whiskey but has forgotten how to move. “What’re you doin’ here?” 

“The cons are getting simpler.” He says it again. “And I’m too old to be a super soldier anymore.” 

“Eliot...” Nate scratches the back of his head, closes his eyes. “Is this about Moscow? I told you I was sorry about that.” 

“Sophie told me, actually,” Eliot points out, “but I get where you’re coming from.” 

“If you need some time off...” 

Eliot shakes his head. “I called a guy I used to know. He’ll be here tomorrow.” 

Nate’s gaze doesn’t falter. “How long will you be gone?” 

Eliot’s had his heart broken a time or two before, he knows exactly what that sudden, indescribable pain is. 

He shakes his head. “Nate.” 

The mastermind stares for a long time. Eliot sees the moment he registers exactly what’s happening, but he stares for longer than that. It’s instinctive denial. Shock. 

It’s calling a time-out during a game because even though you know you’re about to lose you don’t want it to end yet. 

“No.” He says eventually. “No, Eliot.” 

It sounds like an order. 

If there were a moment he was going to shed a tear it would be this one. 

His voice is gentle, near soft, when he says, “Yes.” 

“I’m sorry about Moscow, okay?” Nate swallows hard. “I’m sorry about all of it. But you can’t...you can’t.” 

He smiles. “This isn’t about Moscow.” 

“What about the others?” He takes a step forward. Eliot takes one back. “They need you. This team needs you.” 

“That’s the thing, Nate.” He says it the best he can, but he’s never been very good at rhetoric. “The cons are getting easier, the payouts are getting bigger, Hardison’s itching to get started on his future in this   
world, and you’re itching to get out of it. I’ve taught you guys everything I can, everything you’ll need. David can punch people as well as anybody else in my line of work. You don’t need _me_ anymore.” 

“That’s not-”

“We both know it is.” He runs a hand through his hair and smiles again. When he’d done this with Moreau he’d told him at this point that he would see him again in hell. Now, here with Nate, he can’t think of an appropriate parting line. So he does the only thing he knows how to do with any kind of skill outside of his profession. 

He leaves. 

\--

When Nate tells the others there’s screaming, a lot of words jumbled together incomprehensively, and need. 

They need to find Eliot. 

Need to bring him back. 

Need to apologize. 

Need to figure out why.

They need to _fix_ this. 

Nate thinks it might be the hardest thing they’ve ever done as a group, finding Eliot and then convincing him to come home. A part of him doesn’t want to try – Eliot hadn’t been all wrong in what he’d said to him   
and, if Nate were in his shoes, he wouldn’t have forgiven the blatant disregard for survival that’s become a constant in the way they’ve been treating their hitter. 

He doesn’t want to try because he knows a lost cause – an unworthy cause – when he sees it. 

And don’t go thinking that Nate considers Eliot the one unworthy in this scenario. 

A bigger part of him, though – the parts that are made up of Sophie, Parker, Hardison, Sam, Maggie, his mother, and his grandfather combined – aren’t willing to not try. 

They’re the best crew this side of any ocean in the world. 

They’ll find Eliot. They’ll convince him to come home. 

There’s no point in telling the others that he doesn’t believe that. 

\--

David tells them. 

Tells them that very first day that they shouldn’t look, that they won’t like what they find. 

Hardison snorts at him the same moment Sophie slaps him. Parker stifles a giggle and Nate pours himself a very small glass of whiskey. 

He knows he’ll need to be sober for the duration of this one. 

He knows this isn’t about Moscow or a disregard for safety. He knows this isn’t about Eliot being angry with them or getting bored. He doesn’t know what it’s about yet, but he’s managed to sift through his guilt   
enough now to see that this isn’t the story he thought it was going to be. He can’t make out the plot, can’t see his usual three steps ahead, and that scares him. Because the one thing he does know for sure is that David is right. 

They won’t like whatever they find. 

\--

It takes them ten months. 

Ten months of false starts, distractions, dead-end leads, and David looking over their shoulders every second and warning them to back off now, back off before it’s too late. 

But they don’t listen – they never listen – and ten months later they find Eliot. 

They don’t find him because he’d stopped running from them. 

At least, not exactly. 

He hadn’t stopped running from them. 

He’d just stopped running. 

\--

The date on the headstone tells them that they’d been exactly two months late. 

\--

“He knew,” David speaks into the silence that’s fallen over the four left standing. “I don’t know if he went to a doctor or if he just...knew. But he did. One way or another he saw it coming. He did a job in the Middle   
East, right after he left you guys. Fell off the grid. Then he came back to the states, took care of some things...I...he told me not to tell you. Ordered me not to. He didn’t want you guys to see him at the end. That   
was one of his biggest fears, y’know? Watching people die...he could have handled that, had before, but he didn’t ever want to put any of you through that kind of-”

“Shut up.” Parker breathes. 

David does. 

\--

They cry and scream and leave and come back and mourn and rest and accept at different paces. 

Hardison stays on a computer for eighty hours straight when they get home. No one knows what he’s doing, but not even Parker can convince him to walk away. And when he finally does he doesn’t go near one again for over a year. 

Sophie runs a grift on a conman in upstate New York. She works the job alone, it takes six months, and she doesn’t break character once. 

Nate goes back to Maggie. They both know it’s not going to last and Nate hates himself for giving her hope, for reminding her of what it used to be like, before Sam. But that’s what keeps him alive. As long as he’s with Maggie like this he can pretend that he’s young and naive again, that the whole world is open and waiting for him to conquer it. 

He might have stayed with her like that forever, but Maggie knows better and eventually sends him back. It takes fourteen months. 

\--

No one knows where Parker goes. 

\--

A year and a half after they find Eliot they get together again. 

Parker’s hair is short, Sophie’s is blonde. Hardison looks thinner than he probably should, and Nate had developed a limp a while back after a car accident had left his leg broken in several places. 

David’s the only one of them that seems to be doing alright. 

Then again, David’s not really one of them. 

\--

They play at running cons for a while, but Nate’s heart just isn’t in it anymore, and Sophie doesn’t have the drive these days to do anything but grift. 

Hardison latches onto that first client, though, and doesn’t let go until their mark is penniless and rotting in a county jail. Parker gets that gleam in her eyes, the one nobody’s seen since they came back, and Nate realizes that the two of them are young enough, in love enough, to make this work.

\--

It’s not a simple process, and not one that either of them takes lightly, but by the end of the year Hardison finally has a crew of his very own. 

\--

Parker stays with him. 

\--

Sophie eventually goes back to London, the one place in the world where she’s always felt the most at home, even if it’s not technically her hometown. 

\--

It takes another year of drifting, drinking, and fighting, but eventually Nate follows her there. 

\--

They go back to see Eliot every now and again. 

He’s buried deep in the heart of Oklahoma; Nate can barely stand the heat, and Parker still gets jumpy around the wild horses that roam the land near his grave. 

Mostly they go separately – one at a time had always been how Eliot preferred to talk to them, anyway, - less often than that they go in twos, though probably not the sets you’d imagine. Once every few years they go as a group. 

It takes some time – and fights, and the beginning of whole new lives – but eventually they come to terms with what Eliot had done for them. 

He’d left without saying goodbye, without a hint at the truth, to protect them from the pain of his death. He’d died, more than likely, completely alone. 

For them. 

\--

Hardison hadn’t understood why – _how_ – anyone could do that. How any brain makes that out to be the best decision, the most logical one, the rational one. Because Eliot had always been that for them. 

Logical, rational – the best. 

Then he’d gone and done _that_ and Hardison hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to forgive him. 

Then Nana had died. 

Hardison had gone to her side, with his foster brothers and sister, Nana’s last living niece, and a hospital full of nurses, doctors, and staff that had come to care for her like family. He’d stayed with her through her last breath; peaceful, surrounded by love, pushing ninety years old and still snarky and sharp. 

No one could hope for a better end. 

And losing her had still nearly killed Hardison. 

After that he’d appreciated the sacrifice Eliot had made for them. 

For him. 

To his own dying day he knows he’ll never forget it. 

\--

Nate doesn’t recover like Hardison and Parker – even Sophie – seem to manage. Between letting Sam down, letting Eliot go, pushing Maggie away, never being enough for Sophie, and simply failing, so many times, at everything he’d ever set out to do besides be a criminal, he just can’t find a reason strong enough anymore. 

He cuts back on the alcohol for Sophie at the end. He figures it’s the least he can do for her. The last thing he can do for her. 

It’s not the bottle that kills him. 

Actually, the doctors can’t figure out what kills him. 

They label it natural causes and call it a day. 

Sophie buries him in a plot next to Eliot – Sam’s ashes had been scattered all those years ago, so that’s never even a thought – and for a long time after the three left standing visit the two fallen. 

\--

Parker remembers losing her first brother like she remembers how to steal. 

It’s always there – always. 

If she’s not thinking about it she’s feeling it, if she’s not feeling it she’s thinking about it. It’s a constant that simmers in the background, influencing every move she makes, every jump she takes, every item she swipes, and every emotion she avoids. 

It’s better, in a way, than what happens after Eliot; because her first brother isn’t the hot, searing pain of a fresh wound. Isn’t new and something she needs to be careful with. He’s just always always always there. 

But Eliot had always been there. Always been there for real – not in her head and actions and dreams – but actually really _there_. She could poke him and talk to him and be saved by him and fight with him and learn how to fight from him and bicker with him and doubt him and trust him and lean into him and watch movies with him and make funny faces behind his back and giggle at his scowl. 

He was the real kind of constant, whereas her first brother was the forever kind of constant. And she’d always known the difference between them; always known that real was more dangerous, even if forever hurt more, and that someday it might happen that Eliot would switch over and join her first brother in forever. 

She just wasn’t ready for it to actually happen. 

And when it did she ran. 

She went to Asia, and China, and Europe, and Australia. She stole. She danced through the streets with the bounty she’d normally stash away and wait for them to find her with it. She never thought about death, didn’t wish it upon herself or seek it out actively in any way, but she hadn’t hid from it either. 

She would have stayed like that forever – stealing and dancing until someone somewhere got lucky and she could see them again – but then Hardison had called. Hardison with his deep rich voice that she’d learned to trust, that brought back feelings she hadn’t thought, once upon a time, she was even capable of identifying, let alone experiencing. 

Hardison had called, and that deep rich voice she trusted and loved was sad and broken, and at first she’d thought it’d been about Eliot – and, in a way, it probably had been – but the words he’d said out loud had been about his Nana: a kind old woman Parker had met three times before they’d fallen apart. Nana was dead and Hardison was hurting, worse now than he had been before, and he needed Parker, please come back. 

And she had. 

And then she’d stayed. 

She hadn’t wanted to at first. She’d wanted to go back and dance with her stolen treasures every night until the sun went down. Wanted to be free like that, free to live or die and not care which. But Hardison had made her care which. Hardison makes her want life. 

So she’d stayed for him, stayed for the boy she loves. 

And for the brothers she’d lost. 

\--

Sophie dies after she buries Nate. 

Catherine sticks around for a while. Then Olivia for another year. Trina and Isabella take turns going to the cemetery when it’s time; talking with Parker and Hardison about the family they’d had and lost. 

Andrea checks in with Tara every few months, even runs a job here or there. Her real self, that name that Nate had told her once didn’t do Sophie justice, stays back and watches. She dictates and directs, but doesn’t fuss or worry. 

Her real self had stopped being her real self the day Nate had fallen in love with Sophie; and now Sophie’s gone and her once-real and fiercely independent original self doesn’t know what to do with the power that’s left over. Her fire’s all but gone out. 

She misses Sophie terribly and blames Nate and Eliot in equal parts for her death. 

If she’d just been allowed even a moment alone with the hitter before he’d run from them back then she knows she would have been able – one of them, anyway, would have been able – to convince him to stay. 

Seeing his death, watching it like a dramatic tragedy of a play you can’t call _cut_ during, might have been the most painful thing she ever would have had to do, but at least she would have been the one deciding. 

She understands why Eliot had done it his way, and a logical part of her – Andrea, she thinks most often – appreciates it fully, because she knows exactly what the outcome of that decision had meant for him. But other parts – Julia, Trina, Catherine, Isabella, Elizabeth, Olivia – hate him for what he’d done. 

She’ll never truly hate Eliot Spencer, of course. She’d loved him wholly, like family. But also she’ll never fully forgive him. 

Sophie dies after she buries Nate, and that had been the biggest part of her. 

The others leave slowly over the years. 

Catherine gets tired. 

Olivia fades out while she’s drinking tea one morning, no indication at all that it’d been coming, though when she thinks back on it later she recalls that the tea she’d been sipping had been Eliot’s favorite and perhaps that had just been a push too far too soon. 

Trina says goodbye to Parker and drifts away, her fondness for the younger woman the only thing that had been keeping her here, and when she sees the girl so happy now with Hardison she knows her place there is gone. 

She loses Isabella soon thereafter, and figures out that maybe they’d been linked. 

Julia takes a job and does so poorly that she never comes back again. 

She doesn’t notice when Elizabeth goes, just reaches out for her one day and finds her missing. It’s not the loss that affects her so much as the indifference it’s greeted with. 

She’s slipping.

Andrea bows out after Tara dies. 

One by one all her masks shatter and now all that’s left is the hollow home of a woman who once was but never will be again. Sophie had been the real her, the only her worth anything after Nate and Eliot and 

Hardison and Parker had invaded her world. Sophie had been her center. 

But she hadn’t held. 

She hopes that Hardison and Parker bury her in Oklahoma with Nate and Eliot. 

She’s never been a great fan of the deep south, but she figures she’ll be able to get used to it well enough. 

For them. 

\-- 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> This was, like all of my Leverage stories, written several years ago. I don't remember what was going on in my life at the time that made me want to kill all of them over and over again, but I actually kind of remember feeling really content the day I wrote this. I almost think you have to be happy to write something this sad - I do, at least - in order to deal with it. So, there's that. 
> 
> If you made it through this story, I thank you for reading (I know I usually don't make it past that Major Character Death warning). If you wanna leave me a thought, I'd greatly appreciate it. And next time I'll post something happier, I promise (I'm out of death!fics, anyway).


End file.
